Raising the Bar

How breakthrough races occur, and how to make the most of them

Once the gun sounds, the here and now is all you have and all that matters, so do whatever it takes to focus on the task at hand. Tune in to respiration, cadence, lactic-acid build-up and other barometers of effort. When entering uncharted territory, you may feel a tendency to back off. "You should be a little scared and nervous, but if the feedback is okay, you have to believe and go," says Fleming. "I told Joe [Lemay] I was going to be at the one-mile mark at [the 1995] cross country nationals, and he’d better be in the lead or I’d start screaming at him. We both knew he belonged there, but it was a new experience for him, and therefore might be intimidating."

Having a coach or mentor like Fleming on site is an enormous plus. Daniels tells of coaching a young altitude-trained runner in South America who was running his first race at sea level, a 5,000 meters. "He was about 100 yards behind the lead pack, running alone, and with six laps to go he asked me if he could drop out. I said, ‘Not until you catch the lead pack.’ I don’t even know why I said it, but off he went after them. It took him four and a half laps to catch them, and then he looked around, realized he was leading, and kept going, winning the race. It shows what you can do if you just concentrate on the task at hand and let the outcome take care of itself."

If you are ahead of schedule and feeling great, go for it. Wetmore tells of watching CU’s Kara Grgas-Wheeler run the best race of her collegiate career at the 2000 Mt. SAC 5,000 meters. "She’d sat out the indoor season with anemia, and this was her first big race back. I felt she was capable of 15:50 to 15:48. We went out at those splits, and she was telling me with sign language that it’s too easy. She ended up running 15:27, almost 20 seconds faster than what I considered dangerously optimistic."

Sometimes, however, the race’s opening stages don’t dictate the outcome. In 1992, at the IAAF World Half Marathon Championship in Gateshead, England, I was curled up by the side of the road in a jet-lagged stupor five minutes before the gun. The first 5K felt so pitiful I almost dropped out. Somehow, the thought of how stupid I’d feel got me going. I ended up increasing the pace every 5K and finishing as top American, with a 2-minute PR. For me, self-flagellation did the trick.

Palmer, who works with mostly non-elite runners, says getting a runner to recognize a potential breakthrough performance as it’s happening is one of his biggest coaching challenges. "There’s this myth that great races are supposed to feel easy—not true!" he says. "People don’t know that if they want to improve, it will hurt. They don’t know how to ride the line." Palmer recommends group workouts, which offer the chance to observe others’ pain and effort in addition to experiencing one’s own. Regular racing helps too, of course. Whatever your method, the goal should be to internalize that red-line feeling, so that when you feel panic at the onset of an I-can’t-sustain-this moment, you can tell yourself, calmly, "Yes, I can, because I’ve done it before."

Capitalization and Consolidation

Perhaps the toughest aspect of a breakthrough performance is what follows. One naturally wishes to maintain the new standard that’s been set, but doing so is far from simple. "Getting there is hard, but staying there is harder," says Fleming. In the short-term, the question is whether to capitalize on the high fitness level suggested by the breakthrough performance, or to back off, the better to safeguard this hard-won achievement.

The strategy depends on when and how the breakthrough occurred. If it was of the "accidental" mid-season variety, it probably makes sense to rest only minimally, then continue the season as planned, aiming appropriately higher in subsequent race efforts. Just don’t become the victim of too-high expectations.

I had a marathon scheduled six weeks after my half-marathon breakthrough in Gateshead (which I’d not expected), and I approached it anticipating a similarly massive PR. Big mistake. Not only did I go out too fast, but I also became despondent mid-race to find myself merely on pace for a modest PR. I ended up finishing 25 seconds off my marathon best—and feeling like a total failure. While you should never treat your breakthrough as a fluke, the expectations it engenders—even those based on scientific goal-pace prediction charts—should never override the two Golden Rules of successful distance racing: Listen to your body, and let the race unfold.

A breakthrough that occurs when it’s supposed to—in a championship race, or as the culmination of a racing season—carries with it the temptation to keep racing during what’s supposed to be a time of rest and recovery. It’s possible to produce additional high-quality performances in this manner, but the skyrocketing risks of injury and burnout are known all too well. In the interest of long-term development, a far better strategy is to proceed with the planned rest. This also allows the mind to catch up with what the body has done.

Allowing a breakthrough to "sink in" is crucial whenever the performance attracts attention outside one’s immediate circle. "Success is as hard to deal with as failure," says Palmer, who is also a sport psychologist. "You need to learn to take it in stride and not just keep going, but keep progressing. You need to set yourself up for the next possible breakthrough, and also to prepare yourself mentally for the fact that chances are, it isn’t going to happen in your very next race."

Palmer recommends having a coach, advisor or mentor whose role includes debriefing you each time you ascend to a new level. In addition, reading biographies of top-level runners can be enlightening. "At some point their success changed their lives and they had to learn how to deal with it," says Palmer. "You can learn from them, including their mistakes."

While consolidating a breakthrough has its challenges, so too it has rich rewards. Primary among them is the change in self-image that a breakthrough brings. Fleming recalls running a 19-mile road race in Puerto Rico in 1972 that changed his life forever. "I was 21 and it was my first race overseas and wearing a USA uniform. I was a nobody, but I ran a great time that day, and my whole attitude changed. From then on I said, ‘I can be good.’ I really did believe I could win every race I entered. People may say that’s cocky, but I felt like I had the goods to back it up."